An alternative TPS rehost approach

The DoD NxTest IPT along with industry participation is working hard on two key initiatives to standardize the hardware and software interfaces in automatic test systems (ATS). The automatic test markup language (ATML) initiative may provide a standard approach to capturing and rehosting legacy test program sets (TPS) through defined schemas designed to normalize all data being flowed between the ATS and TPS. The common test interface (CTI) initiative will provide a standard and common interface on all ATS in the future, and by utilizing transition adapters, have the ability to replicate the physical envelop of the legacy tester interface. Great progress is being made on both initiatives; however, neither is ready for prime time implementation today, as only one of nine ATML schemas has been released to date, and the CTI spec has yet to be released. Lockheed Martin simulation training and support (LM STS) continues to work with both the ATML and CTI working groups to develop and implement these new standards. Recently, an opportunity presented itself which required immediate implementation of an approach to capture legacy TPSs (i.e. test program and associated hardware suite) and execute them on an LM-STARregsystem configured with the required test resources. LM STS developed, implemented and demonstrated an approach where legacy TPS from the common core automatic test system (CCATS) was executed on an LM-STARreg test system. This paper describes the challenge and approach which resulted in a contract award to produce a LM-STARreg configured system to execute legacy CCATS TPSs while providing numerous technical and cost savings advantages to our customer